New York City gets high-performance mobile broadband infrastructure

Northrop Grumman's New York City solution leverages IPWireless TD-CDMA mobile broadband infrastructure. Together, Northrop Grumman and IPWireless have specifically designed and engineered the nation's first high-performance mobile broadband infrastructure, the New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN), which delivers new levels of responsiveness, efficiency, and cost-containment for both emergency and nonemergency municipal services - an industry breakthrough in mission-critical municipal deployments.

NYCWiN provides mission-critical support for a wide array of data, multimedia, and high-speed mobility applications. The first viable large-scale municipal wireless infrastructure, NYCWiN can support virtually any use-model, from continuous monitoring of critical utilities and traffic control services, to broadband multimedia links with emergency response teams, and more. In fact, the network is already proving its versatility by extending support for over 50 critical applications across more than 19 municipal departments, many of which deliver significant cost savings. This flexible, future-proof solution is capable of offsetting a wide range of ongoing operational expenses, making it ideal for cities and counties interested in creating a wireless communications
infrastructure.

The Challenge
The demands on any municipal network are great—and supporting a diverse range of applications, including multimedia, across the nation's largest city is a formidable task. Underscoring this challenge is the need for uncompromising network performance capable of delivering mobile, multi-megabit service across more than 300 square miles of glass and concrete, and throughout5,800 miles of roadway. To meet these demands, it is essential for the new infrastructure to deliver predictable, reliable service over 1Mbps from anywhere in the coverage area.

Additionally, under heavy loading and incident testing, it is critical that per-sector performance be maintained without degradation—a critical requirement for the public safety applications. The infrastructure also needs to be capable of provisioning rich, real-time multimedia applications such as streaming video, and providing support for high-speed mobility. Client access in the municipal environment is heavily reliant on laptops, handheld devices
and mobile data terminals, driving strict requirements for security and dynamic preemption and prioritization for the City's emergency services. Lastly, the solution needs to be based on a single integrated, infrastructure—facilitating communication between municipal entities, and containing costs by decommissioning costly leased line services.

New York City needed a proven solution today, capable of meeting their stringent performance and security requirements. At the same time, the City also wanted to ensure maximum investment protection, and an open migration path to emerging technologies such as LTE in the future.

The Solution
IPWireless met the tough challenges presented by NYCWiN with its V5â„¢ Multi-Standard 3GPP Mobile Broadband
platform, powered by TD-CDMA technology andpurpose-built to deliver high-performance, predictable
mobile broadband connectivity. The network, consisting of approximately 400 cell sites spanning all five of the New York City boroughs, utilizes licensed 2500 MHz spectrum to provide citywide coverage. TD-CDMA is equipped with unique low-latency Quality of Service and Tier of Service mechanisms to deliver prioritized and preemptive network access to specified users and groups, such as government officials or emergency response personnel. The network is also used to provision a wide range of City departments, such as building and health inspectors, and for monitoring key municipal installations and utilities.

TD-CDMA technology plays a critical role in enabling NYCWiN's extensive capabilities, and offers a number of significant and unique technical advantages, including:

• N=1 Frequency Reuse: Enables the entire network to be deployed using a single 10 MHz TDD channel, lowering spectrum acquisition costs and making largescale networks extremely cost-effective
• Intercell Interference Mitigation (IIM): Facilitates interference cancellation between adjacent cells, supporting larger cell sizes and higher data rates at the cell edge
• Tier of Service and Quality of Service: Real-time scheduling capabilities providing dynamic prioritization of specific user groups or cells, and ensuring optimal resource allocation during both normal usage and pre-emptive emergency situations
• Per-sector performance: Delivers higher sector capacity and simultaneously number of users than competing technologies. Dynamic scheduling of radio resource to match user instantaneous throughput requirements.
• Integrated Security: Restricts network access through the use of licensed spectrum, multiple layers of user authentication and quality of service/tier of service compatable with end-to-end encryption of user data. Only TD-CDMA was capable of delivering predictable, reliable performance—at any location within a cell and under heavy congestion.

New Infrastructure Enhances Productivity and Contains Costs
The NYCWiN network delivers an overarching infrastructure capable of providing extensive application support. The potential for synergistic solutions are endless, from support for streaming video from emergency personnel to command centers, to embedded sensors used for vehicle location, distributed command and control, and constant monitoring of essential utilities throughout the five boroughs of New York City—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.

This approach yields significant benefits, both in terms of productivity and cost containment. Workforce effectiveness is dramatically increased through the use of broadband wireless-enabled mobile laptops and handhelds, and substantial cost savings are realized through reduced wear-and-tear on municipal
vehicles. In addition, leased-line overhead incurred through provisioning traffic lights and other resources can be dramatically reduced with this infrastructure.

In fact, traffic control is one of the key areas where the NYCWiN network delivers both cost containment and enhanced performance. Significant cost savings will be achieved by replacing existing leased lines with wireless connectivity. In addition, continuous monitoring of traffic via wireless sensors and supplemental controllers enables traffic to be more efficiently managed according to timeof- day, congestion patterns, and seasonal variations. Over 2400 wireless traffic light modems will be deployed throughout the city in the next year.

Broad-based application support provides tremendous future viability and investment protection, which was a key factor in the NYC DoITT decision to adopt the TD-CDMA technology as the cornerstone of the NYCWiN infrastructure. The IPWireless TD-CDMA infrastructure is purpose-built to maximize service capability
and system longevity. To ensure its ongoing viability, the system is fieldupgradeable to LTE, enabling the infrastructure to evolve gracefully as wireless technology continues to develop.

Partnering with IPWireless to Achieve 21st Century e-Government Solutions
The unified infrastructure of the NYCWiN solution represents a fundamental shift in the way that services are provided in municipal environments. By consolidating municipal services into an integrated whole, a new level of responsiveness is achieved that delivers key advances in both efficiency and cost containment. The ability of the network to provide services is unparalleled, creating an umbrella of support for virtually any type of application or service required by a municipal entity. The result is an integrated approach to servicing governmental needs that can only be achieved through 21st century technology.